I thank hon. Members throughout the House for their generous support as I make a phased return to parliamentary life. I rise to speak to Alf Dubs’s amendment 87 to bring to the UK just 3,000 of the 26,000 unaccompanied child refugees in Europe. Although I also support Lords amendments to provide other protections for asylum seekers, others will speak on those.
I speak on behalf of many hundreds of people in Bristol West who have written to me, urging me to help refugees. Many have also donated time, money and practical help in camps and in Bristol, which is a city of sanctuary. I am standing up to speak tonight because this matters more to me than I can possibly say—more than obeying the instructions of my doctor to take more rest.
I understand that there has been uproar in some quarters about a speech made in Saturday’s “Shakespeare Live!” by Sir Ian McKellen. To my mind, it was the high point of the night. Nothing else came close to the potency of the language, the power and the feeling of
the delivery and the relevance today of Shakespeare’s message, written 400 or so years ago. It was given as a speech by Sir Thomas More, sheriff of London during Henry VIII’s reign, addressing rioters who protested against foreigners. He called on them to
“Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage,
Plodding to th’ ports and coasts for transportation”—
I am no Ian McKellen. That is a vivid description of the current situation for so many children, young people and adults fleeing war today. He asks them to consider what they would do if they were refugees, which country would give them harbour, whether they would go
“to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal”,
and how they would feel if they were met there by
“a nation of such barbarous temper”.
If the worst happened and our children were alone, fleeing war and persecution, would not every one of us hope that our children would receive safe harbour in France or Flanders, Germany, Spain or Portugal? We must support amendment 87 to protect other people’s children.
In Bristol West, my caseworkers and I are dealing with many of today’s families torn apart by war—with children who are scarred and parents who are desperate. This is one such story. Mrs Djane’s family home in Mali was attacked al-Qaeda in December 2012 because her husband was a Christian. Her husband and daughter were shot dead in front of her sons. She was beaten and left unconscious. Her sons believed that she was dead and fled the family home, taking nothing. When she recovered consciousness, her sons were gone and her husband and daughter were dead. She assumed that her sons had been killed or kidnapped by al-Qaeda, and she fled to the UK. On arrival, she was taken from the airport by a man who imprisoned and raped her repeatedly until she escaped from him approximately 20 days later. The police took her to the trafficking charity Unseen, which put her in touch with the Red Cross to see whether her sons could be traced.
Mrs Djane claimed asylum and was granted refugee status, but she spent the next two years searching for her sons. She finally found them in a border town between Mali and Guinea. They are living with strangers who have been kind enough to take them, but who do not have the means to care for them. Her youngest son tragically died last year from an infected snake bite. That death, the murder of her husband and daughter, the loss of her sons and her own imprisonment and rapes devastated Mrs Djane. She suffers from severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and panic attacks. We are supporting her with applications for her sons to join her, and I hope for a decision soon.
The amendment we can pass tonight will help other children who are separated from their parents and fleeing war and persecution. We must help them before it is too late. Vulnerable children are going missing now from camps across Europe. I dread to think what they are suffering, whether alone or in the hands of traffickers. We would be failing in our duties if we did not show our leadership, and meet our legal obligations and moral imperatives to those refugees and asylum seekers.
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Many people concerned about immigration say that it is out of control, and that they feel its impact but their concerns are not being heard. They must be heard, but it may be that they do not differentiate between refugees and other migrants. I have had hundreds of emails from people in my constituency urging me to do more for refugees, but there are also worries. Everyone here needs to be concerned about how child refugees are protected on their way to the UK and when they arrive.
The Minister seems to see helping refugees as a pull factor; he then uses that as an argument against bringing children here. That so-called pull factor is often attributed to the assistance given to refugees, but that is misleading. First, it associates them with taking rather than giving. Secondly, it often inflates the numbers to ones vastly above the reality, with headlines about “floods” or “hordes” of migrants in general and refugees in particular.
Let us have a few facts. Refugee children are already on their way. They may have survived a dangerous journey when, tragically, their parents have not. They may have become separated from their parents. There are children in camps in northern France. Sadly, more than 100 have already gone missing, as other hon. Members have said. If we had only taken them, they would be safe. It may already be too late.
The World Bank’s 2016 Migration and Remittances Factbook identifies the benefits of migration, including migration of refugees. They fill labour shortages in dangerous, dirty and difficult jobs, or those that others cannot do for other reasons. Migration helps our economy to grow, and helps our country in so many ways. Migrants add skills and knowledge, spend money locally and pay taxes. They are less likely than people born in this country to claim state welfare. Many, including refugees, set up their own businesses or help to run others, creating jobs for local people. They send money back home, £306 billion of it to developing countries—three times as much as state aid. That helps developing countries’ economies, and, in turn, benefits us as they trade with us, buy our goods, visit us as tourists or students and further help our economy.
Indeed, the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility’s fiscal sustainability report estimates that, as a consequence of the effects I have described, projected levels of immigration will actually help us to reduce Government debt as a proportion of GDP, steadily, and by one third by the middle of this century. Refugees are people, who have skills they want to use, and who have demonstrated their determination, resilience and courage in ways that we can only imagine. Unaccompanied children demonstrate those things even more, but need our protection, love and care to be able to recover.
Many people may feel compassion for refugees, but may also want to know where all the extra public services are going to come from. They may not know the true numbers, or the long-term benefits. They may fear change. That is reasonable.